Impatience and a respite

Still making preparations, and the start of the trip can't come soon enough. I've all but completely checked out as far as work is concerned. I'm going to sign on tomorrow, get a few things done, and that will be it. No more work - for two weeks. In all honesty I probably need to spend more time cleaning and packing than I do working, since most people are going to be gone for Good Friday anyways.

This year we were thankfully spared from going anywhere for Easter - and thus also spared from the girlfriend's extended family drama - which is a long story but to put it in the simplest terms possible, my girlfriend's mom and aunt do not get along. And they attack each other passive-aggressively, which makes family gatherings...interesting. For her grandparents' 50th anniversary a year or so ago, the aunt made it clear what she thought of us by sitting my girlfriend, me, her parents and brother, and nephew all downstairs in the basement for dinner while everyone else ate upstairs around the kitchen table.

"We're out of room, so you're eating downstairs". SHENANIGANS I SAY. I was even slightly offended and usually I'm pretty low-key about these kinds of things. It's not like I'd have much to say to anyone at the table anyways, but the way the seats were divided it was blatantly clear what was going on. So every Easter for the last three years we've gone over to the aunt's house, and each time, while bearable, is incredibly awkward. And as much as I'd like to say it was the aunt's fault completely, a lot of the blame falls on my girlfriend's mom - who simply cannot get over the "favoritism" her mother showed for her sister, allegedly. This is what I hear, anyways. They're all nice people and I hold no hard feelings towards any of them, it's just an interesting mix. You know what they say: you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family.

My family has its own drama and its own feuds, but for the most part people just don't talk about it. The biggest issue involves a feud between my own mother and aunt, which I don't really know the full details of, and my aunt ended up skipping out on her own stepmother (my grandmother)'s funeral due to this feud - which is a real shame. I really hope my sister and I are always on good terms, I'd hate to deal with a lot of the crap that goes on in people's families. If someone has a problem, let's talk about it and try to fix it. It's awkward for a few minutes, but I'd rather have someone tell me I was being an ass, than be completely oblivious to it and have people making comments about something I did or said behind my back. You can't fix what you don't know is broken, that's for sure.

So on Saturday we get to go to Minneapolis for yet another Final Fantasy concert. Now keep in mind, I already went to a Nobuo signing in Chicago and two FF concerts there, but with one in Minneapolis, there's just no excuse for me NOT to go. Especially when I was able to get meet-and-greet tickets for the reception afterwards... a perfect opportunity to perform a Level 3 Ultra Gaijin Blackout on Mr. Uematsu and trick him into telling me whether or not he's composing the theme for Final Fantasy XIII. What is a Gaijin Blackout, you ask? It's simple.

Japanese people, by nature, do not expect foreigners to know any Japanese - AT ALL. Anything beyond "karaoke", "arigatou", "sushi", and "konnichi wa" causes a null pointer exception in their brains.

In other words (for you non-programming folks out there), to get hit with well-executed Japanese from a gaijin source actually confuses them! More often than not, this causes a loss for words and they don't really know how to respond to the Japanese-speaking gaijin... "gaijin speaking Japanese...? Does not compute... WTF... uh...uhm...et to...". This lowers their J-defenses, which is a sure-fire way of getting information (i.e. TRUTH) out of a guarded Japanese person. In this case, theoretically, a flawlessly-executed Gaijin Blackout might force Uematsu on the defense and the theoretical NDA he probably/definitely signed about his work on XIII may not be the first thing that pops into his mind as a response, and he may actually tell the truth. It might not work, and I'll have to make sure I can Gaijin Blackout him when he's away from his translator (Japanese that are fluent in English are obviously immune to the Gaijin Blackout) but it's worth a try. If successful, it will be my first ever Gaijin Smash attempt. If I can get something out of him, you can bet it'll show up right here on this blog!

And as I finish this entry, I sit here playing with my new digital camera that will be put to use on the trip to Tokyo. Here's a picture of my kitteh, Hikari.